Adam Pash

For the next half hour, I'll be answering all your questions live, as fast as possible, in the comments of this post.

Here's how Ask Lifehacker Live works: You post a question in the comments, and the current Lifehacker writer-on-duty will answer it. We won't be able to get to everything, but we'll answer as many questions as we can in the next half hour or so. Short questions work better than complex ones in this post—if you have a question that'll take longer to answer, email it to us at tips at lifehacker.com or post it on the #tips page, and we'll try to get to it in our longer Ask Lifehacker posts during the week. Ready, set, ask!

Update: Thanks, guys. We're all done for today, but stick around, because we'll be doing this again soon!

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Answer: You've got a lot of different options. Right now for iTunes-to-Android-ish sync, I'm using DoubleTwist, which I like b/c it does over-the-air syncing and supports AirPlay. If it's a more simplified, possibly purer version of iTunes/Android sync, you might prefer iSyncr.

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Answer: I'm always thrilled to take submissions from readers. If, for example, you've seen us write how to do something, but you've got an even *better* method, or our method is just a little long in the tooth, write it up and email tips at lifehacker.com, or submit it to the #tips page, or email everyone on the masthead until somebody hears you! We've got a lot of people trawling our collective tips inbox every day, but even at that, it can be difficult to get to everything, so if you don't hear back right away, don't be discouraged.

If you've got a piece of internet real estate, like your own blog, I always encourage people to write stuff on their own sites. We're always happy to link to great content, or, if you're feeling generous and wouldn't mind seeing your name on the site, let us know if you're up for letting us republish what you've written.

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Answer: I have the worst Android phone on the planet—the AT&T/Samsung Galaxy S Captivate—and without rooting, one would assume Android is the saddest excuse for a platform on the planet. So in that case, yes, it's definitely worth it. That would would be better off bricked than it was stock.

I don't know enough about the Xperia x8 to say for sure, but rooting does give you a lot of options (like running custom ROMs, which has done a lot for my Captivate). Even if you weren't installing a custom ROM, the advanced permissions you get from a rooted phone means you can install and use a lot of great apps that you need rood permissions to use.

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Answer: I'm not a hardware manufacturer, but when business is involved, the answer is almost always money. Maybe it's a matter of it not being worth the money to manufacturers to quickly turn around updates (probably)? This is the somewhat unfortunate side effect of the Android brand vs. the iPhone brand. Android is an OS only, so there's no one saying "we have to update these things as soon as possible b/c when users buy a phone, they expect these updates." Instead, you've got countless Android phones and no one acting as an overall steward b/w hardware and platform, keeping everything in order.

Last week at Google I/O, Google announced an initiative/partnership with manufacturers to tighten the update process, but I'm still dubious as to how well that will all work.

In short: iOS creates a (reasonable) expectation from users that Android has, for both good and bad reasons, a difficult time living up to.

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Answer: In general your OS doesn't matter that much. What kind of programming are you interested in? For a somewhat broad introduction to the subject, you could try out our learn to code beginner's guide, and for some extra help, turn to our Programmer 101 tutorial.

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Answer: I feel like you have a very specific answer in mind here that you already know I dislike, but this also might just be because you know I don't like The Wire and it's a point of conflict with me and almost everyone I know. In a similar vein:

I love Android. I love its goals, what it stands for, and I even love a lot of its features. But to answer a question that you didn't ask, I just want to take this opportunity to vent: The "hardware" Back button on Android is the biggest mess in recent interface design history. It's inconsistent, and it's smashing two distinct ideas of OS and application navigation into one sloppy experience. Without going into much more detail, this is common:

You launch Google Voice (which is a good example b/c it's an app made by Google) from your homescreen. It's showing a recent conversation. You hit Back to view the conversation list/index. The app exits to the homescreen. You launch it again. You're at the conversation view.

This is normally the *best case scenario* for navigating Google Voice on Android. Worse involves some seemingly infinite pile of conversations you back out of before, again, it exits to the homescreen.

The plus side: Android tablets are moving away from those inconsistently applied hardware buttons to variable on-screen conventions for navigating. This is a good idea for Android. Sorry button lovers.

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Answer: It's really just an experience thing. There's still a big difference b/w native and web on these devices, if only b/c when it's native, you've got a standalone app that runs separately from the browser. That problem actually exists on the desktop as well, but multitasking w/in applications and b/w applications is smoother overall on the desktop b/c its built for more of that kind of complexity.

Oh, and while webapps are still getting good at offline support (i.e., it's available but not widely or well implemented), native apps still offer better offline support.

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Answer: I'm not sure I'm completely understanding the problem, but you should be able to go to the Phone Settings section in Google Voice and simply untick the phone you don't want to use with Voice any more.

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Answer: I know they gave priority to Google I/O attendees, but I'm pretty sure they're just rolling them out very slowly. I can imagine there have been a ton of beta signups.

I did email Google in the off chance that they'd be up for giving priority access to Lifehacker readers. They seemed interested in the idea, but they don't have a system in place for doing that. Fingers crossed, though?

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Answer: I've started using the CyanogenMod 7 nightlies for the Captivate. I like that it's a mostly stock Gingerbread. It's not perfect, but as a nightly, it's still as good as other custom ROMs I've tried. Here are the install instructions if you're interested in trying it out.